Mood rises and falls with day's events

Stevenson Swanson and William RiceTribune staff reporters

This battered city struggled to regain the footing of normal life Thursday, but its recovery remained as unsteady as some of the tottering buildings that have hampered workers clearing the rubble of the World Trade Center.

As thousands returned to their jobs, the streets and subways in most of New York looked and sounded almost as crowded and noisy as they had been before Tuesday, when two hijacked planes rammed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

But normally thick-skinned residents remained uncharacteristically sensitive to the slightest glimmer of hope or shadow of new trouble, their mood rising and falling with the day's news.

An ultimately mistaken report that five firefighters had been miraculously found alive briefly raised spirits, while bomb threats caused jittery New Yorkers to bolt from the Garment District, a Times Square subway station, Grand Central Terminal and even the Upper East Side's exclusive Dalton School.

Adding to the stop-start quality of the day was the reopening of the city's three airports, which were then suddenly closed in late afternoon as the FBI sought to prevent a "small number of individuals" it wanted to question from leaving the area.

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani announced at a morning news conference that 4,763 people were reported missing or confirmed dead, and the reality began to set in that most of those missing likely are dead. The city has brought in 30,000 body bags to hold remains.

Still, family members of the missing flooded a newly opened city information center on the East Side, and handmade posters and fliers showing photographs of loved ones were held up to passersby in the hope that someone might recognize a face or know the fate of others from the same company or floor.

New York's Fox television network affiliate set up a Web site where photographs of the missing could be posted, and it aired heart-rending calls from family members pleading for any shred of information about relatives.

The agony of uncertainty is not likely to end soon because of the enormous amount of rubble that must be removed. In about 48 hours, Giuliani said, more than 6,000 tons of skyscraper debris had been hauled away.

But fears about the possible collapse of neighboring buildings, including One Liberty Plaza, a 53-story skyscraper that is home to the Nasdaq stock exchange, have slowed the excavation efforts. On Thursday, rescue work was halted briefly when the 51-story American Express building appeared to be buckling. The building remained standing Thursday night, and Giuliani said city building inspectors had told him, "The buildings that are still standing have not been found to be structurally unsafe."

The twin towers more or less imploded as they collapsed, causing the rubble from the 110-story buildings to fall in a relatively compact area.

Even so, many of the surrounding office buildings--several of which would be the tallest building in town in many other American cities--suffered extensive damage as they were hit with tons of falling concrete and steel.

Appearances can be deceiving when evaluating the structural integrity of a building, according to Cumaraswamy Vipulanandan, a civil engineering professor at the University of Houston. That's why the skyscraper housing the telecommunications company Verizon has been deemed safe, despite the huge hole in its facade.

"What you see as damaged could be just the decorative parts," Vipulanandan said, "but the structure could be intact. On the other hand, some structures may have cracks in them that you can't see."

Structural inspections typically begin with a thorough search for obvious cracks in the load-bearing beams and columns that hold up a building. More sophisticated techniques, using ultrasound or X-ray equipment, can detect cracks in parts of the load-bearing skeleton that are hidden from view.

An ultrasound test measures the speed at which sound travels through a piece of reinforced concrete or steel. This "is related to its density, and its density is related to its strength," said John Schuring, a civil engineering professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. "Sound travels faster through something that has a crack in it."

Structural damage can be repaired by wrapping a column with a reinforcing jacket made of concrete or high-tech plastics. And foundations can be shored up. That's a fairly typical occurrence in the constantly changing urban landscape of New York.

"Manhattan has undergone a continuous rebuilding and renaissance for more than 100 years," Schuring said. "My personal sense is that although this is an enormous tragedy, that whole World Trade Center section of the city can be repaired rather quickly."

In a sign that life in the city was slowly regaining its normal patterns, the mayor announced that a large chunk of lower Manhattan would be reopened to traffic early Friday morning. And the New York Stock Exchange said trading would resume Monday after the longest pause since the 1929 crash.

With few survivors to tend, volunteers eager to help found that their good intentions had little outlet.

"I've been trying to help for two days," said Peter Mozzone, 23, who works at an accounting firm on Church Street. "I helped carry water for a while, but it seems they don't need anybody. Nobody's injured, really. They're all dead."

Near him at the Chelsea Piers volunteer center on the West Side was a sign that read, "Chelsea Piers is no longer accepting volunteers or donations of food or clothing."

But the volunteer spirit and the desire to express support for the rescue effort seems irrepressible.

On Houston Street at 6th Avenue, about 15 blocks north of the stricken trade center, an impromptu composition of flowers and candles in glass holders has been erected. Many undoubtedly came from the nearby Quick Stop Deli, which is offering a special; "2 dozen roses, $8."

Balducci, the famous Greenwich Village food market, was open but virtually empty. The shelves were not as well-stocked as they usually are.

"We don't have so much left," a clerk said. "So many of our customers have been buying food to take to centers and hospitals."